


the snow it melts the soonest

by Lise



Series: Remember This Cold [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (sideways. without talking about it), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Relationship Negotiation, obliquely Christmas fic, oh no there's feelings. dangerous, one of those rare 'nice fics' from me hoo boy, set early in Remember This Cold verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Loki's always been prone to migraines. Avengers Tower is a safer place to have one than he's had in a while, but that doesn't actually make his head feel any better.
Relationships: Loki/Steve Rogers
Series: Remember This Cold [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/28656
Comments: 34
Kudos: 396





	the snow it melts the soonest

**Author's Note:**

> Did you miss me?
> 
> Sliding in under the wire with my annual "oh look it's a fic where I give Steve and Loki something nice" fic, although this one is very squarely more hurt/comfort than straight fluff. What do you want from me? The hurt isn't _serious_ or lasting! It's fine!
> 
> If you're wondering where this series has been, the answer is: 112 pages deep in the fic that's finally dealing with the Thanos and Infinity Stones thing. It's a lot, but I hope (hope!!) for it to be finished within the next six months. I don't have _that_ much left to write, shockingly enough. Just...the hard parts. But once that's squared away...well, we're going to see a status quo change, I can tell you that for sure.
> 
> For now, though: have this. And thanks to the anon who gave me the prompt that nudged me in this direction. Thank you also, as always, to my wonderful, incredible, [editor](http://ameliarating.tumblr.com), and to all of you who read, comment, kudos, send me asks, and generally make me feel like I'm not on this wild ride alone. I've been writing this series for over half a decade, now. I might not still be here if it weren't for you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> Happy end of 2019, y'all. Here's hoping next year is a good one.

The vague feeling of malaise had persisted for much of the week, never developing past the point of discomfort into something more severe. Certainly nothing worth mentioning, even had Loki been inclined, which he wasn’t. 

He had little interest in indulging Steve Rogers’ pity. Particularly when he wasn’t even _sick,_ just somewhat...off. At most, it was irritating. 

“There's a holiday coming up,” Steve said. Loki paused in picking at the food he’d brought (‘Korean’, apparently, for all that meant to him) and glanced up.

“Yes,” he said. “Your midwinter celebration.” He knew what the one that seemed to take primacy here was called; he hadn’t been paying so little attention as that. But he didn’t feel the need to make that obvious, particularly when his stomach was twisting uneasily and his mood consequently less than optimal. 

“I suppose that’s the essence of it,” Steve said after a moment. “What do you know about it?” 

Loki shrugged. “Gifts. Music. Evergreen trees. The birth of some sort of savior.”

Steve looked very slightly amused. “More or less.” He paused, then went on, “did you celebrate something around midwinter? On Asgard?” 

By the care with which he said it, he knew it was a dangerous question. Loki made his face go blank. “The past tense,” he said, “would be appropriate. The last time I passed a solstice on Asgard it was in a cell.” 

Steve looked as though he wanted to wince, and only just managed not to. “No fond memories, then.” 

“Not anymore.” 

To Loki’s relief, Steve let the subject go. He could feel the dangerous itch at his own core, and did not trust himself not to let it out. He did not particularly _want_ to lash out at Steve, not just now when he had done nothing to earn it, but he knew the texture of himself and the fine knife’s edge of this temper. 

He had no other company, and solitude could chew holes in the mind. 

( _Admit it, you sentimental fool. You would miss his specific company even if there was someone else._ )

All the more reason. 

Steve was frowning at him. “Are you all right?” he asked. Loki cast him a dazzling smile. 

“Most certainly,” he said, and if Steve looked neither convinced nor particularly pleased by the answer, he at least did not try to press.

* * *

Loki woke the next morning with the dawning understanding of the source of his recent malaise. 

He lay there, eyes closed, a seething kind of anger in his gut. It had been a while. Not _that_ long - he’d locked himself in his room in Victor’s castle at one point to ride it out (and ensured that Victor knew nothing about this particular vulnerability), and before that, once while he was still running.

And it had happened on Sanctuary. 

Loki yanked his thoughts away from that and took a deep breath before opening his eyes and standing. His stomach lurched sideways but he breathed through it and made his unsteady way out to the kitchen to fill a glass of water. He caught a flash of light in the corner of his vision, half forming into a shape. His heart rate leaped, but he ignored it. 

The pulsing pain in his head was consuming most of his attention, and it was only going to get worse; he didn’t need to indulge paranoia on top of it. 

The faucet sounded unbearably loud. He filled the glass anyway, and after a moment’s hesitation took a bowl from one of the cabinets and turned to go back to the bedroom. 

All he could do was wait it out - lie on his back with his eyes closed and wait for it to pass. If he were on Asgard there were herbs he might chew on that would ease the worst of the pain, but here - he wasn’t inclined to experiment with mortal pain medication, even if it was likely to work on him, which it wasn’t. 

Another wave of dizziness hit and he caught himself against the wall. His stomach lurched in warning, saliva filling his mouth, and Loki dropped both bowl and glass and lunged for the washroom.

When his guts were empty he stayed where he was, resting his head against the upraised toilet seat. He hated this. 

An old memory slipped in of childhood, crying for the all-consuming pain in his head, certain that he was dying, and Frigga’s voice murmuring soothingly, laying her hand on his forehead and smoothing it away. The feeling of comfort. Of safety. 

Loki’s breathing snagged in his throat and his eyes burned. He swallowed hard, grimaced at the foul taste in his mouth, and dragged himself back together.

It felt like someone was digging their thumbs into his brain behind his eyes. He did not much appreciate the effort they were putting into it.

Loki dragged himself to his feet, trying to shed the bitter memory on the tiles. He glanced at the bowl and glass on the floor, decided not to try to retrieve them, and simply retreated to his bed, crawling back under the covers and closing his eyes. The darkness didn’t help much, but at least it didn’t make it worse. 

Of course, just _lying_ there with nothing to do, unable to sleep, left him with nothing to focus on but the brutal, throbbing headache. _Just cut my head off already,_ he remembered moaning to Thor, and Thor had laughed, but quietly, and put a cold, damp washcloth over his eyes.

_Stop it. Pathetic. Weak. Look at you, so easily undone._

Loki flinched away from that voice. His stomach turned uneasily and he held his breath until the spell passed. 

His imagination supplied him with Steve sitting next to him. Stroking his _hair._ Murmuring _platitudes._ He felt sick at himself. 

No, just sick. 

He made it back to the washroom before he was retching bile into the toilet again, and decided there was not much point in trying to leave. If this was going to be his day, he might as well make it easier for himself. 

He wished he’d brought a blanket, though. Or a pillow.

Too late now. Going back to the bedroom and then returning here sounded like an immense trial he didn’t have the strength to endure. 

_Just wait it out. It won’t last forever._ Norns. He was already thirsty.

* * *

He must have drifted off, or at least faded into some kind of fugue state, because the next thing he was aware of was someone knocking loudly on the door - he could _feel_ the sound of it inside his skull, and almost whimpered.

“What,” he ground out, probably not loudly enough. 

“Loki?” said Steve’s voice. That was loud, too, and he sounded worried. It wasn’t, perhaps, the first time he’d called out; perhaps he thought Loki had vanished again. He hadn’t barged in yet, though, and Loki didn’t particularly want him to. He pressed his forehead against the floor and dragged himself to his feet. He squinted at himself in the mirror, registering pallor, oily hair unruly and curling, and the strain of pain around his mouth and eyes. 

He groped for the magic to make a glamour and bit back a scream, his vision briefly doubling. So much for that.

He took a breath, ran his fingers through his hair to tame it as he could, and made his lurching way out into the main room. He braced himself, turning on one of the lights (like spikes through his eyes), prayed for his stomach to remain steady (more or less), and opened the door to see Steve with his fist raised to knock again.

“Beg pardon,” he said. “What is it?” 

The first thing on Rogers’ face was relief, followed quickly by surprise, then concern. “It’s - not important. Are you all right?” Too _loud,_ Loki thought, but he was probably speaking at a normal volume. 

“Yes,” Loki said. “Quite.”

Steve’s expression did something strange. “Stupid question,” he said, but under his breath, and then more carefully, “you look...sick.” 

“How flattering,” Loki said. “Was there something specific you wanted, or…?”

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed. “I was just...dropping by to visit. Are you sure you’re...you _really_ don’t look well.” 

A wave of dizzy nausea swept over him and Loki braced one hand quickly on the doorframe. “Just a bit tired,” he conceded, and then added, an attempt at normalcy, “why, Captain, are you offering to sponge my fevered brow?” 

Steve’s expression set a little. “I would if you needed it,” he said, a curious sort of defiance in his voice, and Loki blinked at him. His head was pounding, the dizziness getting stronger, and the light of the hallway seemed to be searing directly into his brain. 

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a headache.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Looks like a monster of a headache,” he said, but his voice was significantly lower. 

“I get them sometimes.” 

“Mm.” He paused. “Do you need anything?” 

Loki offered a strained smile. “Unless you can cure headaches…”

Steve seemed to be hesitating, thinking something over. The nausea swelled again and this time he didn’t quite stop himself from gagging on nothing. His face burned as Steve’s eyes widened a little. 

“Maybe you should lie down,” he said. 

“What a capital idea,” Loki said faintly, and made his unsteady way over to the nearest chair, dropping into it and realizing belatedly that he was a long way from the light switch. He covered his eyes only to a moment later hear a click, the light filtering through his fingers and eyelids vanishing. A moment later the sound of curtains being drawn. Ah. He hadn’t closed the door, and it seemed Steve had invited himself in.

He was not as irritated by that as it seemed he should be. Maybe he was just too exhausted and hurt too much to try to throw him out. 

Maybe something weaker. 

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “It shouldn’t last more than a day. They almost never do.”

“That’s good,” Steve said, and then, “here. Drink some water. I bet you’re dehydrated.” 

Loki dropped his hand and opened one eye just a sliver. His suite was dark again - darker than before, with the curtains drawn blocking the daylight. His head still throbbed, but it didn’t feel quite as much like there were daggers stabbing through his eye sockets. 

Steve was standing in front of him holding out a glass of water with that worried look on his face. After a while just staring at him, Loki accepted the glass and took a cautious sip, wary of giving his body anything to reject. 

“You said ‘almost never,’” Steve said, his voice still pitched low. “Does this - headaches this bad - happen often?” 

“Not...often.” More often in the last few years, but that wasn’t surprising. Stress had always made it more likely. 

Steve’s frown deepened. “Has anyone ever...checked it out?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Loki said, then chuffed and said, “at least not in _that_ sense. If it is a - defect, it is one no healer could identify.”

“Huh,” Steve said, but he sounded, maybe, a little relieved. Loki closed his eyes again, groping to set the glass down on an end table. 

“I mean it,” he said after a while. “There’s really nothing you can do that will help. It is just a matter of...enduring.” 

“All right,” Steve said, something stubborn in his voice. “And I can be here to get you anything you need for the duration.”

Loki’s stomach squirmed uneasily, but this time it wasn’t just his body; some other anxiety that was harder to pin down. 

“Why don’t you go get in bed,” Steve said more gently. “Try to get some sleep.”

It felt a bit as though he should argue. On principle, more than anything. He did think of the hall, which seemed very long. “I think I’ll stay here. It’s comfortable enough.” 

Steve made a bit of a ‘hm’ noise, agonizingly skeptical. “If you say so,” he said, and fell quiet. Loki cracked one eye to see what he was doing and found that he had gone down the hall and fetched both basin and water glass, returning them to the kitchen. 

“Don’t wash them,” Loki said, before he could stop himself. “Too loud.”

“All right,” Steve said after a brief pause. Loki let his eye close again.

He gave up on trying to stay alert, even if he felt a bit as though he should. Or should feel as though he needed to. The nausea had eased a little, giving over mostly to the skull-splitting pain, but if he held perfectly still it was slightly less horrendous. 

Loki didn’t quite sleep, but he did drift, and at one point he thought he felt the back of a hand resting against his forehead.

Oddly, he felt...safe. Comforted. 

_Weak,_ grumbled a voice at the back of his mind, but this time he smothered it.

* * *

He managed to sleep - or at least doze - through most of the rest of it. Not soundly, or well, but at least he was less than fully conscious and condemned to utter boredom for inability to do anything but lie limp as a dead fish without feeling as though his skull would crack open and spill his brains on the floor. 

When Loki surfaced properly the worst was over, though his head still felt like glass that might break if someone looked at it wrong. There was a full glass of water near to hand and he drank all of it in three swallows.

Steve was sitting in one of the other chairs, holding a book. “Feeling better?” he said, the gentleness of his voice almost more painful than a shout would have been. 

“Much,” he ground out. “Thank you.” 

“Glad to hear it,” Steve said. He closed his book and Loki frowned at him. 

“Why did you stay?”

Steve studied him. “It seemed like someone should,” he said finally. 

That hit Loki like a punch to the gut and for a moment he was entirely wordless, not certain what to make of it. Steve gave him a smile that looked a little pained, and stood up. “Do you need anything else?” 

“No,” Loki said slowly. “I...do not think so.” 

“All right. If you do...go ahead and call, all right?” 

“I...will,” Loki said, half question. Steve’s small, pained smile wobbled and held. He walked over to Loki, looking briefly as though he’d reach out, then just nodded and went to the door. He paused briefly to reach down and scratch Vali’s ears before moving on.

“See you soon,” he said, before stepping out. Loki stared at the back of the door, eyebrows furrowed. 

It wasn’t that he was _surprised,_ exactly, by Steve’s kindness. Except that he was, a little. He could not - did not, dared not - expect such a thing. When it came to him unexpected…

He turned it over like a rock in a wood, looking for the hidden snake coiled to bite, but he could not see one. Just...Steve. And his kindness. 

It was a heady intoxicant. Could go directly to his head, did he let it. 

He would just have to not let it. Not yet. 

Still too dangerous.

* * *

A week went by - a quiet week, during which Loki eyed every twinge from above his shoulders with suspicion, but the storm seemed to have passed. Steve seemed distracted much of the time, and periodically eyed Loki with a faint line between his eyebrows, but he never brought anything up and Loki declined to attempt to address it. On Tuesday his expression hardened into firm resolve; on Wednesday morning came a brisk knock on his door.

“I brought you something,” Steve said without preamble when Loki opened it. He blinked.

“Pardon?”

“Here,” Steve said, holding out a rectangular package wrapped in paper made to look like a night sky. Loki took it and turned it over in his hands, then looked up at Steve with eyebrows raised. He turned ever so slightly pink. “It’s a present. You know. People give those around this time of year.” 

“I’ve heard,” Loki said. “But I wasn’t expecting one.”

“I hope it’s a pleasant surprise,” Steve said. Loki eyed him, not quite warily, and began to carefully remove the paper without tearing it. There was a box inside, and Loki pulled it out. 

_Deep Tissue Percussion Massage Gun,_ it said. Loki felt his eyebrows climb higher and looked back at Steve. He cleared his throat. 

“I was reading,” he said. “Apparently tension in your neck and shoulder muscles can cause headaches, or make them worse, and this is supposed to be good for...someone recommended it to help.” The pink in his cheeks became a little more pronounced. “You said you were prone to them. I don’t know if it _will_ help, but...it can’t hurt, right?” 

An odd warmth spread in Loki’s belly, and he blinked once. “No,” he said. “No, I suppose it can’t.” He paused, and then added, “thank you.” The words felt a little strange in his mouth.

Steve’s smile was obviously relieved. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I was also going to ask...did you want to go out? For a walk, I mean,” he hastened to add. “It’s a beautiful day. Well, cold, but - not too cold, and sunny, and I thought maybe…”

“That sounds quite nice,” Loki said carefully. Half expecting there to be some catch, some rule, some…condition.

“Great,” Steve said enthusiastically. “I need to go get a sweater and coat, but...I’ll meet you back here?” 

A little bemused, Loki said, “I’ll be waiting.” 

Steve flashed him a bright smile that left Loki briefly a little dazed and left. He walked slowly over to the table and set the box down. 

The warmth hadn’t abated. If anything, deepened, creeping further up toward his chest. 

Hope was dangerous. Hope was _risky,_ untrustworthy, carried within it the seeds of despair. 

Loki couldn’t quite bring himself to crush it. 


End file.
